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The Pipeline Dream Lurking in Canada's Wild
One of many ways to combat global warming is to replace our dirtiest, carbon-polluting fuels, especially coal and oil, with cleaner fuels like natural gas. So proponents of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, an 800-mile megaproject to tap into Canada's natural gas reserves, now say that's their plan. They want us to believe, somehow, that building this massive project through Canada's Boreal Forest wilderness will be good for the environment. Not surprisingly, a closer look at the facts suggests otherwise.
As large and as ecologically important as the Amazon rainforest, though less well known, Canada's Boreal Forest teems with wildlife: caribou, grizzly bears, wolves, and lynx. It provides summer breeding grounds for almost half of North America's migratory songbirds and waterfowl. And by sequestering twice as much carbon per acre as tropical forests, it helps keep the global warming threat from worsening.Not only would the Mackenzie pipeline bulldoze right through the heart of this ecological treasure, it would also open up the most remote and unspoiled regions of Canada's Boreal, paving the way for mining, logging, oil drilling, and other development to spread out across the wilderness. Hundreds of millions of acres of wilderness could eventually be lost. It's hard to see the environmental benefits of that.
What's even worse, it's very doubtful that the natural gas extracted through the pipeline would be used to replace coal or oil. It's far more likely the gas would be used to make oil - synthetic oil.
At the south end of the proposed Mackenzie pipeline, under the Boreal Forest, lies a giant deposit of tar mixed with dirt, sand, and rock - the remains of an oil field that dried up eons ago. It took almost a half-century to figure out how to turn this tar back into oil without spending more than you can sell it for. First, you cut down the forest and strip mine the tar sand from open pits. Massive amounts of natural gas are used to boil massive amounts of water to steam the tar out of the dirt. More natural gas "upgrades" the melted tar into synthetic oil.
Finally, the residual toxic slurry of oily water, sand, and mud is pumped back into the mine pits. They're still working on what to do with the waste, which keeps piling up. Altogether, it takes almost as much natural gas energy to make the oil as you get from the final product. And it makes an unholy mess of the environment to boot.
But with the price of oil hovering around $100 per barrel, this expensive, complex, and destructive process now pays huge profits. Tar sands extraction is booming and oil companies need more and more gas. Last month, the press reported on a proposed $983 million gas pipeline to feed the tar sands.
The $16 billion Mackenzie pipeline dwarfs this project. The three oil companies behind it already own the gas fields it would tap. They are big tar sands operators, with even bigger ambitions, with plans for a $25 billion tar sands plant in the works.
From a global warming perspective, turning low-carbon natural gas into high-carbon synthetic oil is like turning gold into lead. It only makes our challenge harder and wastes the precious time we need to transform our energy system. A better plan would be to prohibit the use of Mackenzie pipeline gas in the tar sands, halt tar sands expansion, and clean up the mess that's already been made.
The Canadian government should continue to protect Boreal Forest wilderness areas alongside the proposed pipeline route, which it started to do Nov. 21 when it created a 3.7 million acre wildlife refuge in the Mackenzie River Valley. That was a wonderful step in the right direction.
The tar sands pioneers spent untold fortunes and many decades of labor figuring out how to get oil from tar sand as economically as possible. Now they have to figure out how to do it in an environmentally responsible manner. Making synthetic oil out of natural gas from the Mackenzie pipeline will not help.
Steve Kallick directs the International Boreal Conservation Campaign for The Pew Charitable Trusts' Environment Group.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company
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14 Comments so far
Show AllWhat's even worse, it's very doubtful that the natural gas extracted through the pipeline would be used to replace coal or oil. It's far more likely the gas would be used to make oil - synthetic oil.
Whatever form the end product may take, you can be damned sure that the vast bulk of it will not be used for any domestic purpose. Canadians will be freezing in the dark and getting their drinking water from recycled sewage as the incessant sucking sound from their southerly 'neighbour' steadily increases in volume.
In fact, the Canadian government's willing involvement in cross-border military arrangements and other such 'North American' collusion, will undoubtedly have US troops on Canadian soil very soon now for 'pipeline protection' and other USA Incorporated purposes.
And no, it's not only the Harper 'conservatives' who are moving things in that direction. It was Martin's 'liberals' who originally signed on to so-called 'Security and Prosperity Partnership.'
The Canadian establishment is un-Canadian. Just look at the leadership in the two aspiring largest political parties, the Fibs (liberals) and the Cons (conservatives) neither of them will get my vote.
For thirty years it has been quisling after quisling.
Arvy; sadly, yes, our Canadian CEO Martin expedited matters for our Harpie, the non-believer.
It is time for us to reclaim the Canadian commons and protect our children and future grandchildren. After all, it is our country, not an American adjunct or colony. I stand by positive ecological measures, not the destruction of them. We will bear the brunt of in-migrating Americans when they run out of breathable air and potable water in their pursuit of the "American Dream." Why should we sully our natural preserves in the name of attaining/maintaining/sustaining the same?
A Voice Apart: Thanks for your post. I admire your perspective. My question is, are the people in Canada going to put up a fight? Or is your government bought and paid for by corporate interests like they are down here?
PLEASE, for the sake of the planet, do not let that sucking sound happen to Canada!
What do you mean, not let it happen?
("PLEASE, for the sake of the planet, do not let that sucking sound happen to Canada!) American corporations bought up most Canadian business at 60 cents on the dollar after NAFTA. The tap has been open for decades, this is just about increasing volume.
No need to send troops into Canada, just send money, all our politicians are for sale. (But better send more money if that dollar keeps sliding against the yuan, China is in the bidding now too.)
Canadians are pretty resilient and can be very lax about many governmental aberrations, but when it comes to our incredible, breathtakingly beautiful and often wild land and its environmental health, most of us stand firm and say, NO! That is what makes Harpie so unpopular here when he refuses to stand by the wimpy Kyoto accord as too strict! He is soooo embarassing!
From my limited perspective, Canada's only slim (very slim) hope may lie in the fact that its political system isn't quite such a rigid Janus-like duopoly as exists in the 'greatest democracy on earth' and thus may not be so easily purchased and co-opted in its entirety. That 'untidiness', along with day-to-day prime ministerial accountability to parliament, does have some slight advanatages.
But, even discounting the inevitable provicial bickering, I wouldn't count on any truly 'made-in-Canada' energy policy arising any time soon. One former Canadian PM (Pierre Trudeau) did give that a try, but was soon replaced by another (Brian Mulroney) who gave it all away and then some under the Canada-US precursor to NAFTA.
Snow Crab: Thanks for the info. Is there any chance that Canadians would get pissed off enough to nationalize their resources to save their country? Just askin'....
Nationalizing resources? Pretty faint hope. We couldn't even keep a National Post Office and national railways. Governments here are selling off public assets to private developers as fast as they can. Health care is definitely on the auction block, that one Canadians are perturbed about but it doesn't seem to make any difference to the politicians. We'll never sell water they tell us, but the dams in the Rockies to funnel the last of the Canadian glacier water south are already built. I think Americans may have somewhat romantic notions about Canada.
I think some Canadians may have somewhat romantic notions about Canada -- like thinking it's a sovereign nation, for example.
@Rebel Farmer: You mean like a Canadian version of Hugo Chavez? Very faint hope indeed.
"One of many ways to combat global warming is to replace our dirtiest, carbon-polluting fuels, especially coal and oil, with cleaner fuels like natural gas."
Obvious nonsense. When you combine a carbon atom with a pair of oxygen atoms, it releases a certain amount of energy. Doesn't matter if the fuel looks "dirty", like coal and oil do, the atoms are the same. If you need x MJ to power your car, and you get it by burning carbon, then it will nessesarily generate y Mol of CO2. Coal, Oil, Natural Gas - it's all the same as far as greenhouse CO2 goes.
Which is not to say that the thrust of the article - using gas to make fuel from tar - is not spot on. If they are making fuel from tar, why do they need gas to power the boilers? Damn silly.
Seems as I remember a few years back that the Canadian Courts allowed logging to begin in the last rain forest located in B.C. so where were the Canadian "no"s then? The indigenous population was against it (much of it on tribal lands as I recall). Maybe I have this story wrong so please correct me Canadians.
This article is annoyingly ambiguous. After the author calling it the the equivalent of turning gold into lead, he then writes that it must be done "in an environmentally responsible manner". Sounds more like it shouldn't be done at all. Indeed, one of the crazy things about capitalism is everything is done on the basis of comparative monetary-cost rather than any kind of energy or environmental impact accounting. Could you imagine the natural world working this way? Than why do these economic apologists argue that capitalism is the most natural and organic of systems?
In West Virginia Mtn top removal mines, they may have to remove and "dispose" of 300 ft of hard sandstone overburden to get at one or two 4 ft. coal seams. It must require far more energy to remove this overburden than one gets out of the little coal seam, but the cost of the explosives, diesel fuel and electricity is so much less that the going rate for coal that it still make perverse economic sense. It's nuts!
Paul M.,
You are forgetting that the energy from fossil fuels does not come only from oxidation of the carbon to CO2. The greatest amount of energy comes from from the oxidation of the hydrogen in the fuel to environmentally beneign H2O - recall the water and steam you see coming from a car tailpipe in cool weather.
Natural gas which is predominantly CH4, so it is 1/4 carbon (molar proportion), compared to oil fuels that approachs 1/2 carbon, the general formula being CnH2n+2. So, very roughly, natural gas produces half the carbon emissions of liquid fuels.
Wow, several articles on this have hit. I posted this on another, but here it is again for good measure. From the Montana side:
http://www.missoulanews.com/index.cfm?do=article.details&id=8B8B8ABA-98F6-C546-DF88110E8019B85D